The year was 1973, and the Houston oil patch was booming. Half-brothers Dickie Hartis and Lawrence Whitworth were working in the oil industry when they decided to start their own sheet metal fabrication company to serve the area's many refineries. Hartis' brother Raymond and Whitworth's brother Wayne would also join the business.

Oil prices had skyrocketed with the OPEC oil embargo that year, and for the next few years business boomed. In their free time, the brothers made custom barbecue pits for friends using the same industrial-strength sheet metal fabrication techniques they used for the oil industry. At the time, consumer barbecue pits were mostly flimsy products that lasted only a few years.

Then the 1980s oil glut hit, and the Houston economy crashed, along with the oil services industry. Out of necessity, the brothers reinvented themselves as a barbecue pit company and Pitt's & Spitt's was born in 1983.

Their first consumer product was the "Combo Unit," a barbecue smoker with the firebox below the cooking chamber. Smoke would flow up through the chamber, cooking the meat. This was different from a typical backyard grill in which the meat was cooked over direct heat from a fire. Serious backyard barbecue cooks, as well as competition barbecue cookers, swore by the Combo Unit.

Later, Pitt's & Spitt's would originate a consumer version of the "offset" barbecue smoker. In this case, the firebox is attached to one end of the smoker, and smoke flows horizontally through the chamber, cooking the meat, and then out an exhaust flue on the other end. Up to that time, offset smokers mostly were used commercially, and were made of brick. By applying their metal fabrication techniques to the principle of an offset barbecue smoker, Pitt's & Spitt's helped launch a culture of serious backyard barbecue enthusiasts and competition barbecue teams.

When Houston's economy started revving up in the 1990s, Pitt's & Spitt's became a phenomenon in Houston and internationally. They were shipping barbecue pits all over the world. Celebrities such as boxer George Foreman, former Houston Oiler Warren Moon, musician and Eagles front-man Don Henley, and President George H.W. Bush were customers.

By the late 1990s, the entire U.S. economy was booming. The Internet revolution was running full steam and just about any company with an idea and a business card wanted to "go public" and issue stock to shareholders. Pitt's & Spitt's was involved in a public stock offering that went awry, and the Hartis and Whitworth families lost ownership of the company.

Through the 2000s, Pitt's & Spitt's went through several owners, though by all accounts the quality of the products never wavered. It also was around this time that the competition barbecue circuit really took off and the company started focusing on building custom pits and trailers for barbecue teams.

Recently, Pitt's & Spitt's went up for sale again, and the Zboril family took notice. Father Ron Zboril had followed the company in the 1990s and was impressed with the strength and reputation of the brand and its products. Along with his sons Ron and Ryan, who have backgrounds in finance, the family bought the company in March 2014.

The Zboril family is from Bellville, and sons Ron and Ryan grew up there and attended Bellville High School. The area around Bellville - including Cat Spring and Millheim - is known for "community barbecues," where meat is cooked in long brick pits in the ground. The sons grew up with this type of barbecue, and they instinctively understood the significance of the pits invented by the Hartis and Whitworth brothers.

Recently, Ryan Zboril took over day-to-day operations of Pitt's & Spitt's. Business is booming at its longtime manufacturing facility and showroom on U.S. 59 just north of loop 610. Zboril oversees 13 employees, some of whom have been there for more than 20 years. They still sell the Combo Unit, as well as an offset version called the "Ultimate" smoker pit.

After taking over the company, Zboril was most surprised at the loyalty of his customers.

"We regularly have customers who bought their pits 10 or 20 years ago bring them in for maintenance. It's like the pits have become a member of the family," he said.

With the recent plunge in oil prices, you might think Zboril is worried. After all, much of his custom barbecue pit business comes from oil companies who sponsor competitive barbecue teams.

But just like the Houston economy has diversified over the last few decades, so has Pitt's & Spitt's. About half of their business is consumer, and the other half custom work. They send their own barbecue team and trailers all over the country to consult on cooking and competitions. They've even started selling their own spice rubs.

Pitt's & Spitt's has consistently produced high-quality barbecue pits through good times and bad, and through the ups and downs of a Houston economy still fairly focused on the price of oil. Fortunately for serious backyard barbecue fanatics, the Zboril family is committed to continuing that long tradition.

A native of Beaumont, J.C. Reid graduated from the University of Southern California after studying architecture and spent his early career as an architect in New York City. He returned to Texas in 1995, retiring from architecture but creating his own Internet business in Houston. As his business became self-sustaining, he began traveling Houston and the world to pursue his passion: eating barbecue.

He began blogging about food and barbecue for the Houston Chronicle in 2010 and founded the Houston Barbecue Project in 2011 to document barbecue eateries throughout the area. Just last year, Reid and others founded the Houston Barbecue Festival to showcase mom-and-pop barbecue joints in the city. The 2014 event drew 2,000 guests to sample meats from 20 restaurants.